


A Tale of Living Louder

by Birdpeople (DeusExMachina)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ambiguous meteor happenings, And I wrote this a long time ago okay, Angst, Grief, Multi, None of the relationships are that concrete to be honest, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusExMachina/pseuds/Birdpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a while of neither of you talking but of him still sobbing away into your shoulder, you wonder when, in his six hundred hour campaign, this kid was given a chance to grow up. When the game actually set time aside for him to take lessons to heart and become a better and more understanding person. The answer is that it didn’t. Then you wonder if you maybe should have made some time for that in your own session. Because you know that you sure as hell didn’t and that’s starting to look like a major oversight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale of Living Louder

** Be the Windy Boy. **

 

You are the Windy Boy, and right now you are opening the door onto an empty room. It’s empty, so empty, and cold, it’s too damn empty to contain that little snip of a boy who’s huddled in the corner over there. That corner is far too big for him, and even though he has his head on his knees like a big, fat, ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign to the world, you go over to him. The room is just too damn empty and the corner is just too damn big for him, and you sit down next to him to try and help him fill it.

 

Even though you get that he wants to be alone.

 

** Be the one he needs right now. **

 

You lay your hand on his shoulder and you _feel_ it when he flinches and his breath hitches and he’s looking at you. He’s not crying, which you’re surprised about, but after a moment of looking at you with his brows all knitted over his black-and-yellow, lamp-like eyes, he kind of leans his head on your shoulder and you just let him.

 

After a minute, you ask him what’s wrong. That was wrong, you shouldn’t have done it, it was stupid, what did you think he would say? You were just trying to fill the silence because you’re so freaking selfish and you hate it when other people are unhappy.

 

He gave this kind of strangled noise. A word. Was that a name? It’s not yours- too many syllables, but what-?

 

And now his _is_ crying. Crying into your shoulder and you smooth down his wild hair so that it fluffs back up and you do it again, but you don’t touch those little horns because you still don’t know anything about his anatomy and you want to respect his autonomy-

 

The Enemy of my Anemone has an Alien Anatomy. The Enemy of an Alien has an Androgynous Anatomy. The Autonomy of an Alien hinges on Anatomical bullshit.

 

He’s crying into your shoulder in earnest now, and you wonder if your being an alien just makes it worse for him. You decide it probably does.

 

He’s trying to speak, his words choked and mangled, but you catch something about his friends and how he let them down and how some of them are dead-

 

And you try to tell him that he did his best and that you would feel the same if anyone in your session died, but the words get stuck between the truth and a hard place. So you settle for rubbing his back and just kind of existing there, in the moment.

 

You try not to think.

 

Because you know you fucked up nearly as badly as he did.

 

After a while of neither of you talking but of him still sobbing away into your shoulder, you wonder when, in his six hundred hour campaign, this kid was given a chance to grow up. When the game actually set time aside for him to take lessons to heart and become a better and more understanding person. The answer is that it didn’t. Then you wonder if you maybe should have made some time for that in your own session. Because you know that you sure as hell didn’t and that’s starting to look like a major oversight.

 

You think he might be done when he finally shoves you away. But one look at his face tells you he’s not. He’s still crying and he won’t look at you, and at this point, the fact that the tear tracks are reddish doesn’t even register on your weird shit-o-meter.

 

He stumbles to his feet and leaves, not speaking to you, not looking at you. You wish you weren’t so alien so that you could read him a little better.

 

When he’s gone, you look down at the sleeve of your shirt and idly wonder if the reddish-purple stains on the blue are permanent. Then if that’s selfish.

 

You decide it is.

 

And you hate yourself just a little more for it.

 

 

** Be the Coolkid. **

 

Who, you?

 

Why you?

 

You’re just some orange feathery asshole in a timeline where you don’t belong. You came back to make things better. Do things look better? You didn’t think so. You’re redundant here, you’re not chief coolkid anymore, so what gives you the right to still be hanging around?

 

They don’t need any more vague clues about a future you were just half-bullshitting, half-imagining anyway. They don’t need you and they don’t have time to listen to your self-pitying sarcasm or totally ironic bitching.

 

You should leave.

 

Or rather, since you’re in constant motion out there on the cosmic scale, you should stay and let them leave you.

 

You don’t belong anymore.

 

As if you ever did.

 

** Be the glowing one. **

 

You can’t be the glowing one. The glowing one is too busy being dead.

 

** Be the Seer of Light. **

Okay…

 

** Seek the glowing one. **

You find her by herself. You’d never have thought there was so much room to be all spread out like this, but everyone seems to be alone, to be unhappy being alone, to go from empty room to empty room, to be travelling on closed circuits, like electrons in their own isolated shells, orbiting around things all of you want to talk about but that none of you want to think about.

 

Finally, two of you become Hydrogen atoms and stick.

 

You think that you sought her out for the light.

 

It’s dark with no windows to peer through, and she sheds this _light_ wherever she goes. Sometimes you wonder if she gets sick of it. Sometimes you wonder why you don’t.

 

You always sought her for the verbal repartee in the past. Now you do it because she walks in her own light.

 

Although she insists that she walks in yours.

 

** Be the dog-girl. **

 

You can’t be the dog-girl. She’s too busy being herself.

 

You insist?

 

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

 

** ==> **

 

You are now the dog-girl.

 

Really? Is that what you are?

 

Well, you’re not human. Are you the original? You don’t think so, since first you were a dream person, then you were dead, then you were combined with your dead dog-who-was-also-a-god and a science-y magic voodoo thing, and then you were dead again.

 

But you could be considered the original, since she became you when she died, so now there’s only one of the two of you. And that’s you.

 

You’re certainly the only, but the only what? The only you? Are you you anymore? How can you tell? You’re sure someone would tell you, if only you knew whom to ask.

 

Were you changed by everything that’s happened to you? Would the original have been changed? Would she have changed in the same way you did? Is it bad if the answer’s no?

 

Do you want to be the original?

 

Who are you?

 

What do you want?

 

** Be the other Coolkid. **

What?

 

** The not-feathery one. **

  
Oh.

Man, this is such bullshit.

 

You just hope that you die of boredom so they can lay your pale-ass corpse out on the roof with all of the others.

 

You bet they’d make good company. All, ‘Sup, coolkid, let me engage in some sicknasty slam-poetry battles with your dead self.’

 

And you’d be all, ‘Nah, bro. Maybe later. For now I’m just soaking up these green rays like they’re the last fruit gushers on Earth and I’ve got, like, some sort of desire to be diabetic before it goes out of style.’

 

On second thought, if you died of boredom here, you wouldn’t put it past the other people on this shitty meteor not to a) decapitate you, b) suck your blood, c) lick your skin like some depraved necro-maniac, or d) defile your corpse with their party-colored tears.

 

On-balance, you decide to stay alive.

 

For now.

 

** Be the Depraved Necro-maniac. **

Excuse me?

 

** Fine, be the Blind One. **

No, you don’t want to be the blind one. You want to be someone else. You want to be someone who didn’t kill the thief. You want to be someone who doesn’t have blood on her hands, you want, you want, you _want._

No, you don’t.

 

You just _feel_. You…. Could it be _possible_ that you were in love? What is this human emotion called ‘love’?

 

Anyway, what the fuck good did this ‘love’ do you in the end? She’s dead. You want to be dead t-

 

NO. That’s defeatist talk.

 

What can you say? She defeated you. She always did. She still wins, even now.

 

You are still plastering that pointy smile over everything you do, but it’s never hurt so much to do that before as it does now. It hurts, you hurt, you’re so numb you can’t even be sure if your face is even going through the motions anymore or if it’s quit like the rest of you.

  
Liar.  
  
  
Quitter.  


Fakey-fake.

 

You _feel_ and you _hurt_ and you’re _screaming to get out but you’re holding it all in and you’re going to explode, just go up in flames, and when you see her again you’re going to say sorry because of course it was your fault and not hers. She took on the name of her ancestor and then went out and followed her but you never did that. You only ever pretended and it used to be so easy to lie, to pretend, but now it’s so, so hard._

You wish you could have traded all of that ‘love’ or ‘hate’ or ‘pity’ or whatever for a chance to save her from herself, from you, from luck, from the rip and pull of a pending session, from circumstance, from space-time, from life itself…

 

You wish, you want, you _wish._

 

But you know she would never have let you, anyway.

 

** Be the Bard. **

 

 HONK.

 

 honk.

 

HONK.

 

** ==> **

 

Hey there, Tavbro.

 

Aw, it’s okay, man. It’s not like I can all motherfucking forget that you’re dead now. Does that mean that I can’t be all getting my feelings-jam on with my best motherfucking friend?

 

Karkat? Karkat won’t mind.

 

What did I want to talk about? Aw, nothing really. Just a great big stack of nothing. Shit, man. It’s not like you’re even talking back.

 

How am I? I’ve got my motherfucking calm on by now, that’s how. I could go for a drink or a pie, though. Shit, I think everyone here could just use something to up and make them calm the fuck down. Yeah, you’re dead. That sucks. Some other people died, too, I think. I don’t think I killed them all, though. But anyway, all of the people here are just so wound the fuck up. Not a sopor-coated miracle in sight to dull the motherfucking pangs.

 

No, my main motherfucker, not those kind of pangs. The kind that’s all up in my rib cage, all the fucking way up in my chest cavity, kind of fizzling and sizzling like how our slam-poetry battles used to all up and get. Anyway, all of those feelings are all up in there now, and blazing and burning, and it’s getting real hard to tell one from another. I keep thinking one of them’s gonna fizz out and I’ll stop hurting…

 

BUT IT JUST

 

keeps on

 

NOT

 

motherfucking

 

HAPPENING.

 

** Be the not-feathery Knight again. **

 

Damn, what time is it?

 

Hell, what _day_ is it?

 

It’s, it’s… oh.

 

No, shut up, just shut the fuck up. This will not be your thing. It won’t. This is so unironic is practically barely ironic at all. Practically… practically sincere, all right?

 

You kind of wish Rose would stop trying to talk to you about the wanting-to-talk-to-dead-people thing. It’s not like you’ve gone up there and tried to initiate an actual conversation with any of them. You’re not the most fucked up one. That little crown jewel was bestowed to the clown one. The one who killed people. Bestowed upon his practically-royal-purple alien ass, like, hours ago. Hours, right? Just a few hours? You’re just checking.

 

After all, it was bad enough when Bro d-

 

…

 

You also wished the others would stop bringing up that ti- that… _conversation_ in which you said that you’d prefer that dead versions of your corpse not start washing up on the beaches and piling up… When did you even say that? Hours ago? That sounds right.

 

Hours? Minutes? Whatever, it’s not like it even matters to you.

 

What time is it again?

 

No, dammit, you got this thing.

 

It must be the same day you started.

 

Really? That seems wrong. Check your math.

 

With all of those timelines, offshoot, doomed, with all of those time loops, you’re not even sure how old you are anymore. You wish Aradia hadn’t decided to stay behind. You kind of want to be able to double-check this shit with her. To run the numbers by her. You kind of also wish that you could just take a brief jaunt in LOHAC without seeing the bloodstains and remembering h-

 

HIS. His d-

 

DEAD- You can do this, coolkid-

 

 _His dead body_.

 

Dammit, Bro. How did you not even know exactly how old he was?

 

How long he had existed.

 

…

 

You need a fucking watch or something. Seriously, what the fuck time is it?

 

** Be the angry one. **

 

No, just fucking NO. Why the fuck does this blue-and-black asshole keep stalking you? Why the fuck doesn’t he get that you just want to be by yourself so that you can come to terms with the fact that not only are you the most despicable, wretched, pathetic example of your species in existence, but you’re also a terrible leader, friend, and apparently moirail, too, because seriously, you’ve stopped knowing where that lanky purple fuck slouched off to ages ago.

 

Oh, who are you fucking trying to kid? You already knew all of that shit.

 

Now you just need a quiet sulk to- gog DAMN him! Who does he think he is? Does he think he’s being all stealthy or tactful or whatever, coming in here so quietly, like you don’t even notice him.

 

Seriously. He’s not fucking invisible. He’s not even all that quiet. Fuck.

 

Just his whole, ‘I am trying not to piss you off too much’ demeanor PISSES YOU THE FUCK OFF.

 

You don’t want to see his stupid face, you don’t want to hear his dumb, slightly breathy voice, and you don’t want him to ASK YOU QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ANTISOCIAL NATURE YOU’VE BEEN NURSING FOR THE LAST HALF-DOZEN SWEEPS. REALLY. You don’t. At all. Nope. Not even a little.

 

Come on, nothing could even conceivably happen between the two of you, even if you _did_ deign to open up a little. He’s already stated for the record that he is, “Not a homosexual,” whatever the fuck that means, and it’s not like he exactly shares a lot of information about himself, either. In fact, there is considerably less chatter than you would have imagined from him.

 

Maybe it’s this tact bullshit again. Well, he can take that tact and just shove it, because the game knew how to pander to the development of your species. You’re a soldier. A really unimpressive looking warrior, with your fail leadership skills, nubby little horns, and stained turtleneck.

 

Jegus fuck, you kind of wish he would say _something,_ just so you could tear into him a little. Make him feel bad for how bad you’re feeling right now.

 

Maybe this is what his species acts like, once they’ve grown up a little. Once they’ve stopped dreaming of heroes and started acting like fighters. You have to say, in strictest confidence, of course, that you’re a little disappointed. Maybe even more than a little. You had hoped, despite what you said, that these people would be better than you, that they had succeeded where you had failed.

 

To some extent, they had, but you kind of think it may be your fault that some of them fell short.

 

** All of the dead ones, be alive again. **

I’m sorry, but you can’t do that.

 

** All of the dead ones, be alive again. **

Sorry, but you really _can’t._

** Be alive. **

You don’t get it. You can’t just _do_ that. You can’t make that happen.

 

** Stop being dead. **

You can’t…

 

** Stop. **

No, god damn it!

 

** Stop. **

You can’t bring them back! They’re gone! Maybe you’ll see them in three years, but you can’t be sure! In the meantime, let it go! Let them be dead.

 

** Please. **

Don’t you understand the difference between won’t and can’t?

 

** Don’t be dead anymore. **

  
Sorry. **  
**

** You’re missed. **

They’re gone. For good. Sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this based on the song Living Louder?? That was a long time ago....
> 
> Say hi to me on tumblr!! (quasi-birdpeople.tumblr.com)


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